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King Slayer Series
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We're finishing the King Slayer series this week, talking about David. When asked what sin took David out, most people think of adultery with Bathsheba, lust, or even murder. But today we're talking about something different: sloth.
Many misunderstand what sloth actually is. It's not simply laziness or physical idleness. According to the desert fathers of the sixth century, sloth is a spiritual apathy—a neglect of one's duties to God or others, a failure to engage with your life's purpose. It's a willful disinterest in the good you're supposed to do. Not bothering to care when caring matters.
The story begins in 2 Samuel 11:1—a verse many people miss. This opening verse contains the decision that set up everything else that followed:
"In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men... But David remained in Jerusalem."
At the exact time when David—a king—should have been leading his army into battle, he stayed home. This one decision created the space for all his other sins: the affair with Bathsheba, the adultery, the murder of Uriah, the cover-up, the lies. None of it would have happened if David had fulfilled his responsibility.
Sloth will distract you from what matters. Think about when you sit down to pray. You resolve to cast your cares on the Lord, but your mind wanders—to the news, to your to-do list, to social media. Before you know it, your prayer time is gone.
The devil doesn't have to destroy you. If he can distract you, that's enough.
Sloth doesn't just distract; it diverts your talents and energy away from redemptive purposes toward sinful ones. David was a man of action, aggressive and oriented toward conquest. When he stayed home, he didn't lose that nature—he just redirected it. He traded war for women.
Not every open door is from God. Satan opens doors too. Just because an opportunity exists doesn't mean it's God's will for you. Satan wants to divert you from God's yes into endless distraction.
This is especially crucial for younger believers to understand: you can be running a thousand miles per hour in the wrong direction. The Apostle Paul said:
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Therefore I do not run like somebody running aimlessly."
As you get older, you'll have more opportunities than you have time and energy. You must master the ability to say a thousand nos to God's yes.
Sloth will try to convince you that a life of faithfulness, purpose, and consecration to God isn't worth it. You start to believe that faithfulness is boring, drudgery—that you're missing out on real fun.
Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's not from the Father. This is a critical misunderstanding, especially for younger generations. Resistance doesn't mean it's not redemptive; sometimes the difficulty is exactly why it matters.
God designed work as a good thing. In Genesis, He gave humanity work before sin ever entered the world. But in our fallen world, work comes with thorns and difficulty. That's not a sign you should quit—it's a sign you're living in reality.
You live in a broken world where things break, employees are irresponsible, bosses are demanding, and org charts are never perfect. Level-set your expectations accordingly.
"Do not grow weary in doing good, for at the right time we will reap a reward if we do not give up."
If you're young: Your primary temptation will be to distract yourself away from progress, purpose, and calling—through your phone, social media, and endless scrolling. The people who stay focused in their twenties and thirties do amazing things in their forties, fifties, and sixties. Work hard and don't get discouraged.
If you're middle-aged: You have everything except time. You have more opportunities than you have energy and time in your schedule. You must learn to say no to worthless things so you can say yes to eternal things. This might mean having one hobby, not ten, if it interferes with loving your wife and family well and raising your kids for God's glory.
If you're a senior saint: Don't assume your season of significance has passed. Bible scholars think David was around fifty when this happened—an age when he might have thought all his meaningful battles were behind him. But in God's economy, things have expiration dates, but people don't. If you have a pulse, God has a purpose for you. Win the race by running hard in the last ten meters.
How do you kill sloth? First, you must kill condemnation.
One of my pastors said something I've never forgotten: "Half-hearted Christians are the most miserable people in the world because they know enough about God to feel guilty but not enough about the gospel to feel happy."
Satan wants you to think your relationship with God depends on your moral performance rather than on the finished work of Christ Jesus. [This section continues...]
You must kill condemnation. One of my pastors said something I've never forgotten: "Half-hearted Christians are the most miserable people in the world because they know enough about God to feel guilty but not enough about the gospel to feel happy."
Satan wants you to think your relationship with the Father depends on your moral performance rather than on the finished work of Christ Jesus. But here's what happens: most half-hearted Christians know all the things that are wrong, yet they haven't internalized at the deepest level that Jesus was already crucified for those things. You don't have to crucify yourself when you do those things. They haven't gotten the good news all the way in.
So what do most Christians do? They think God's feelings toward them are based on how their devotions have been going lately, how many days it's been since they looked at pornography, how long it's been since they yelled at their kids. But listen: if you believe that and try to base God's relationship with you on your performance rather than the finished work of Christ, you will spend your whole life assuming God is angry with you, disappointed with you, and disgusted with you. That will just keep you from the Father.
That's why the Prodigal Son wouldn't come home—he thought the Father would put him in the doghouse and make him a slave. Instead, what happened? A big hug, a welcome home, a kiss on the cheek, and a party. That's what the Father does. He pours out more grace.
There's a scene from The Last Samurai that captures this truth. A troubled former American Civil War veteran named Nathan Algren gets thrown into a training session with an expert Samurai. He gets handed a wooden sword and is told to fight. He gets defeated and knocked down repeatedly—he has a concussion, he's bleeding from his nose and mouth. He knows the enemy is stronger than him, but on the muddy, bleeding ground with no hope of success, his trembling hand just finds its way to the sword once again and he stands up again.
Every time I see this scene, a verse from Proverbs sears itself into my soul:
Though the righteous fall seven times they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.
Do you know the difference between people who finish their life in righteousness and people who finish their life in wickedness? It's not that the righteous succeed more or fail less. It's that they keep getting back up and walking toward Jesus. That's the difference.
I know everyone in this room has something in your life you've failed at for the thousandth time—the marriage didn't work, the endeavor failed, all these things. Can I just say something to you? Forget what lies behind. Strain forward to what lies ahead. Get back up, dust yourself off, breathe grace in, and go. There's mercy for tomorrow. I'm going after Jesus again. That's our thing. We're grace people.
You've got to crucify condemnation or you're never going to keep going.
Number two—and this is very unsexy but it's the most significant thing you'll learn—you've got to learn to live by habits, not feelings. If you're going to conquer this thing, there's no other way to say it: you must live by habits, not feelings.
The text says, "At the time when kings go off to war." In other words, it's saying David's habit was to lead battles. I counted them this week—there are almost twenty battles before this moment that David led. So when you get to this one, what it's saying is: David was in the habit of doing something. He got out of his habits, and that's when the destruction came.
Do you know how almost every season of immense destruction in your life starts? It starts like this:
That's how all of them start. The New Testament just says it like this: "Make no provision for the flesh. Stay in your habits."
When you read the Gospels next time, notice how frequently it says this about Jesus: "As was his custom." Jesus was a man of consistency and discipline.
Successful people do consistently what everybody else does sporadically. There is no transformation without consistency. We don't rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our rhythms.
David got out of his rhythms, and all of it stopped.
Last thing: if you want to defeat this thing, you've got to elevate your vision. You've got to elevate your vision for your life.
I think David lost his spiritual vision for why these battles mattered, so he just stopped fighting them. In 2 Samuel 7, God establishes with David what's called the Davidic Covenant—He gives him all these promises. I think David forgot all the promises of God and just started thinking, "Oh, it's just a little skirmish with the Ammonites. They've got it."
But if David had been thinking differently—if instead of thinking "Oh, it's just a little skirmish with the Ammonites," he'd been thinking, "No. Me winning these battles means I'm claiming the promises of God given personally to me in the Davidic Covenant. I'm protecting the Messianic line from whom will come the Savior of the entire world. I'm securing the spiritual inheritance of my great-great-grandchildren"—if he'd been thinking that, he would have gotten up off his backside and led that battle.
He lost the spiritual vision for why they mattered, and so he just got out of it.
Do you think when Jesus called Peter to give up his bass fishing hobby that Peter had any idea what was going to happen? When Jesus said, "Come follow me," I think Peter was like, "Ah, I kind of like working this top-water frog across the debris in the pond." Peter had no idea.
Do you think Peter knew that someday he would be crucified upside down in Rome and catalyze the movement of the church that would overthrow the entire Empire? Do you think he knew he would stand on the steps of the temple with divided tongues of fire resting on his head, supernaturally empowered to preach in languages from all over the world, staring down the very executioners of his Lord, calling them to "Save yourselves from this wicked and crooked generation," and 3,000 of them would be baptized before his eyes?
Do you think Peter knew that someday he would be so full of the Spirit of the Living God that he would walk past crowds and his shadow would heal people? No. But that's what happens when you get around Jesus. He just elevates your vision for what's possible with your life.
Small things done for the glory of God, infused with the power of God, begin to change everything. You've got to elevate your vision for your life and see what God can do.
Let me land it here with an insider story. In 2019, I stood exactly at this spot on the stage, and I had an anxiety attack while I was preaching. Before that moment, I always thought anxiety attacks were something people exaggerated. But something happened to my body, and for the next eight months, before, during, and after teaching, I would have an anxiety attack. My throat would close up.
There's a little office at this campus with a window that faces right here along the back wall. I sat in that office as the service was starting and threw up into a trash can before I preached. Every single time. For eight months.
When I could get myself together, I would walk down that little aisle right there. My predecessor, Pastor Steve Strou—who pastored this church for 40 years—sat next to me. For those eight months, he had a backup sermon right next to him so that if I got to a spot where my throat closed up and I thought I was going to vomit or pass out, I could look at him and tap him in and he would preach.
It got so bad that I thought, "Maybe God's closing the door and I'll never preach again." I had other pastor friends from large churches who offered me executive pastor positions. I said, "Get thee behind me, Satan."
There came one time—one time only—where the pre-roll video was playing right before preaching, and my throat started closing up. I thought, "This is it. I'm not going to be able to do it." I looked at Pastor Steve and said, "I don't got it today."
He looked right back at me and said, "You're up."
Then he said this: "The people need what God has given you today."
When he said that, something in me just went, "Maybe they do. Maybe they do." I stumbled my way up those steps and I sat on a stool and I read a 22-minute sermon that day.
Can I say something to you? Some of you right now have fallen down so many times, and you're weary and tired, and you're thinking about giving up. Listen to me. Look me right in the eyes. The people need what God has given you. The people need what God has given you today.
God put you on this planet. He put the Spirit of the Living God inside of you to minister to the people of God. When you go forward for the purposes of God, to the people of God, in the power of the Spirit of God, something eternal happens. Elevate your vision. Elevate your vision for your life.
God might use you to transform people from one degree of glory to the next. When you connect what God has put in you with the people of God and the purposes of God, there is a joy, a life, a purpose that floods into you. It changes everything. Changes everything.
There's a church in London called Holy Trinity Brompton. A guy named Steve there described exactly this phenomenon. When he was asked to run the coffee team on Sunday mornings, something changed. At first, he thought, "I'm a pastor. I don't need another job." But he said yes.
As he handed coffee to people, something really changed in him. He found himself growing in love for them. He thought, "These people are amazing. This is an extraordinary, diverse community." Even people he found a bit frustrating—as he handed them their coffee, he grew in love for them.
He realized: the church is like the Bride of Jesus Christ. It's the thing He gave Himself for. The church is God's plan for the salvation of the world. There's no plan B. When you connect what's in you to the people of God, you fall in love with what God is doing.
Some of you have never elevated your vision to what God might do with you. You don't know what happens when you connect what's in you to the people of God. There's an eternal purpose waiting for you.
